Laptop missing MBR file

[Norgermish]

Greetings and thanks for viewing this thread,
Please forgive if this has been asked before but I searched the threads and didn't find quite what I was looking for there.
I have a Dell 1545 Inspiron laptop running Win 7 Ultimate 64. Last week while sitting at home I got up and caught the cord on laptop with my foot. Consequently pulling it off the table to the floor. It wasn't a hard landing, but hard enough I guess. I restarted and it came on with Missing MBR message... start again and then I got a message to check if my hard drive was loose. I pulled hard drive and made sure it wasn't jarred loose. Restart and still get Missing MBR. I ran Win 7 RE and when I got to the System Recover Options there is no hard drive listed to select for start up repair. I went into command prompt and tried the steps in this article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392#appliesto

but it doesn't seem to recognize the commands I put in at the prompt. Just hoping to get my laptop started again, it just seems strange after such a fall this thing has broken completely....
Thanks again for reading this through,

 

[DrB0b]

Most common symptom of a dropped, in use, laptop would be a dead/failing hard drive. Because you say the Windows Recovery cant even see the drive, pretty sure that is your issue.

You will need to purchase a new HDD and reinstall the OS. If you have another system you could hook it up to it and see if it can see it to try some data recovery.

Other things to try if you feel like it, remove and reseat the RAM, power cycle the laptop. If you have the drive in your laptp and you put your ear close to where it is located, can you hear any clicking or whining noises?

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[vacunita]

I have to say the drive got damaged with the fall. Since drives spin very fast, and the reading arm is very close to the platters any sudden impact can make the arm contact the platters and cause irreparable damage to the drive.

So yeah, start looking for a new hard drive. The laptop itself is probably fine, the HD not so much.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[Norgermish]

Thanks for the replies....hoping not to hear that about the hard drive but it does seem like that is the problem.
DrBob....yes I can hear the drive running and a light consistent clicking.
I just put this drive in a few months ago maybe I can get some warranty from Dell...IDK

Thanks again for the help

 

[Norgermish]

One more question on repairing MBR....I have another drive I wanted to try to repair...this drive shows in the System Recovery Options. Doing a start up repair doesn't work so I went to Command Prompt and as per my previous post I used the link there that goes through repair options in command prompt. I type in /fixboot or /fixmbr...both commands come up with a message that says, "'/fixboot' is not a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

Am I doing something wrong? The drive is listed as:

x:\Windows\System32>

 

[BadBigBen]

just drop the "/" from those commands...

e-g- type: FIXMBR

now about 6 months ago, I had dropped a single HDD from no further than about 60 cm (2 ft.) onto a table... and the drive was toast...

old drives had metal platters, most drives today (that I am aware of) use ceramic platters instead...

and Norgermish, that clicking sound is a bad signal and most likely you will not be able to access any data on that drive...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[rclarke250]

those are not commands, they are switches. You would type >bootrec.exe /fixmbr <enter> or >bootrec.exe /fixboot <enter>

The first part of the article tells you step by step how to recover the bcd from the backup. If it still won't work, you would be better off, using a usb cage and recovering the files you want, and wiping the partition and doing a fresh install of the OS. It is also possible the drive itself is damaged, and you should run the manufacturers diagnostics, or download the ubcd it has them all on there under hdd. ubcd can be had here:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

 

[BadBigBen]

thanks RClarke250, I had forgotten that this is W7...

so ignore my rambling about dropping the "/"...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

Just in case it wasn't said in these terms: With that clicking sound, your best option is to :
1. Back up the data, if you want to keep any
2. get new hard drive
3. install OS to new hard drive
4. attempt restore of any necessary files from old hard drive.

Reason I say this is that the more you test and tinker with a damaged drive, the closer you're getting to the end of the road - no data recovery, aside from paying a dedicated company some $500 t- $x,000 to recover the data.